Quality-driven software development: meaning, possibilities, and tools

Software drives our world. Nowadays, most businesses, phones, and cars depend on coding. As a result, software plays a significant role in modern society. As a result, software development quality is crucial. But what exactly software development quality means? Let's look at the meaning and principles of quality-driven software development.

Quality-Driven Software Development is a process, a set of best practices, and a framework. A high-performing team delivers exceptional results using methods and approaches refined over decades of successful projects.

Software products are characterized based on their functionality and quality. The quality goods will accomplish what users are searching for. Fulfilling the SRS documentation's requirements can explain the fitness. Although the "fitness-of-purpose" definition is a satisfactory description of quality in most devices like cars, tables, and grinding machines' fit of purpose' is hardly a whole lot acceptable in the case of software products. Consider software products that work correctly and functionally. So the program performs all functions described within SRS. The interface is almost impossible to understand.

What are the five core principles of software quality-driven software development?

For quality-driven development, it is essential to start from the beginning, maintain a systematic approach to quality, take ownership of quality, and remember to be creative. Developing quality software is something that only happens in stages. There is much more to it than tools, methods, and bug counts.  Quality is crucial to digital transformation, so you should involve your entire organization.  In practice, there are five cornerstones of quality-driven software development. So, let's analyze each one.

1) Specification

The agreement between stakeholders and the developers is a significant factor in software development.  There can be a lot of challenges associated with writing a good software specification. It takes an understanding of business or process, technology capabilities, limitations, and good communication skills to register a quality specification that is understandable to both - project members and non-technical decision makers. To verify that the specifications are met, a third party reviews them to ensure such factors as: 

• comprehensible
• project-specific
• achievable
• testable
• based on priorities

2) Design

In software design, requirements become blueprints. It takes creativity, experience, technical expertise, and a commitment to quality to create a good concept. During this step, it is crucial to maintain quality to achieve a successful outcome.

Software design is an essential factor in enhancing quality and productivity. Embedded quality control ensures the website or app is practical. Before coding begins, quality control provides a primary understanding interface. Investing time and resources in the design review is more cost-effective than reworking during the coding phase.

3) Coding

Clean, quality code does not just happen by accident. Developing quality-driven projects requires developers to commit and be passionate about them. Code can be written in several ways, but one should always strive to meet high-quality standards.

• Simplicity is a key 
• You should not overdo and reinvent the wheel
• Continual unit testing against the requirements

These principles are a great place to start. In addition to these core principles, there are many others, such as robustness, maintainability, usability, and efficiency.

4) Testing

And the last cornerstone for quality-driven software development is testing. It is the most misunderstood and underrated part of software development. Defects are the result of poor testing. Since the first three foundations failed, testing is the last defense against poor quality reaching customers and end users.

It is necessary to integrate testing into the software development process and to push it out of the end of the cycle.

Finding defects is not the definition of successful testing. Finding the problems and resolving them is the goal. As a result, you must create test plans, develop a comprehensive test strategy, prepare the environments and data, and ensure that all procedures and results are documented.

5) Security

As part of the development process, quality-driven software assurance helps identify errors and flaws in the software code and design, so that money and time are not wasted. This way, the end product is secure, competitive, and performs as expected. Software quality assurance practice can enhance the reputation of a business and ensure user and client satisfaction.

Why are software quality metrics used for quality-driven software development?

A quality measure is a way to evaluate your products, services, and processes. Quality metrics are a tool to determine customer satisfaction levels within a company.

Software Quality Metrics (SQMS) are an essential management tool; they represent numbers representing information about software or its development processes. Specific metrics measure code quality based on its complexity or ability to pass testing tests. Other process-related indicators describe software workflow and productivity. Software quality measures are standard practice in software development firms as they give them a better idea of how a software product works.

Quantitative quality metrics measure how large a software product can be, how many lines it contains, and how many bug occurrences per thousand lines. Qualitative coding quality measures include maintainability, readability, clarity, efficiency, and documentation quality.

Although many can be done to improve the quality of the product during such phases, the following are fixes that take place so the defect can be resolved as quickly as possible at a high-quality level.

Final thoughts

Building quality-driven software applications do not happen by accident. The process of software quality assurance requires a collaborative effort from the very beginning.

Quality is not a universal property of software. It depends on the stakeholders` context and goals.

No matter how well you do it the first time, you can always expect it to become invalid over time. Hence, continuous quality control is the only way to solve the problem. It is essential to continuously evaluate quality control measures based on a product's properties and the organization's quality goals.

As a result, software professionals would only have to spend less time fixing defects and maintaining existing applications. Using this time more productively, we can innovate solutions to make the process more efficient. Furthermore, this would reduce the organization's costs and enhance its reputation.